Lecture 8 - Beliefs and attitudes 1

Question 1

What is a belief?

Answer 1

What you think about how the world is and how it should be

Question 2

What is an attitude?

Answer 2

How you react/behave in response to certain stimuli

Question 3

Are attitudes more specific than personality traits?

Answer 3

Yes

Question 4

Broadly, what two things characterise conservatives’ highly active defensive systems?

Answer 4

Anxiety/fear
Disgust

Question 5

Broadly, what two things characterise liberals’ open-mindedness?

Answer 5

Oriented to reward
More Intelligent

Question 6

What is the most predictive association between political orientation and attitudes?

Answer 6

Conservatives feel threatened/disgusted

Question 7

What is anxiety/fear evolved to protect us against?

Answer 7

Predators or large agents

Question 8

What is disgust evolved to protect us against?

Answer 8

Small organisms and microbes

Question 9

Are conservatives’ defensive systems more easily aroused than others?

Answer 9

Yes, they feel more threatened

Question 10

Which of Gray’s systems is more active in liberals?

Answer 10

Gray’s BAS - appetitive/approach oriented

Less anxious/neurotic and less prone to disgust
More sensation seeking and excited by novelty
Less need for cognitive closure and lower conscientiousness

Question 11

Which of Gray’s systems is more active in conservatives?

Answer 11

Gray’s BIS - aversive oriented

More anxious and neurotic, more prone to disgust
Less sensation seeking and suspicious of novelty
Intolerant of ambiguity
Higher need for cognitive closure and higher conscientiousness

Question 12

How can evolution explain conservative ideology?

Answer 12

The human brain evolved in prehistory, before strong social inequalities. (Lack of large groups)

Dawn of agriculture (~12,000 years ago) enabled extra inequality, by creating food/resource surplus, divisions of labour, and perpetuating generational differences.

Progress towards equality seems to be impeded by conservative attitudes

These conservative attitudes rest on powerful predispositions from defensive systems inherited from our evolutionary past

Question 13

What personality type did Adorno identify? What questionnaire did he make?

Answer 13

Authoritarian personality - person supporting fascist regimes
- Influenced by harsh parenting and socioeconomic context
- Fear and aggression predicted conservatism

California F scale (f for fascism)

Question 14

What are nazi beliefs targeted by the F scale?

Answer 14

Weak vs strong people, a few strong leaders: Nietzsche as read by Hitler
Beliefs in the occult and supernatural
Many conspiracy theories today have roots in far-right ideologies

Question 15

What were Altemeyer’s criticisms of the F scale?

Answer 15

Old-fashioned, insufficiently captures modern political attitudes

Does not distinguish between right and left authoritarianism -
- control of free speech
- wealth redistribution
- i.e. Stalinist USSR vs Nazi Germany

Question 16

What scale did Altemeyer create?

Answer 16

RWA - right wing authoritarianism

Question 17

What are the two aspects of Altemeyer’s model of RWA?

Answer 17

Personality and cognitive ability

Personality:
- Punitive attitudes
- Prejudiced
- Fearful

Cognitive ability:
- Dogmatic
- Accept insufficient evidence to support their beliefs

Question 18

Meloen et al. (1996) found that the various scales of RWA strongly predict…

Answer 18

Right-wing social/political stances, e.g. apartheid, anti-semitism, isolating AIDS victims

Question 19

Meloen et al. (1996) found that the various scales of RWA moderately predict…

Answer 19

Sympathy for right-wing political parties (strongest prediction for the Racist political party)

Question 20

What improvements were made by Zakrisson (2005) in a new 15 item version of RWA scale?

Answer 20

Reasonable internal consistency
Predicts ‘modern racism’ and ‘modern sexism’ in Sweden

Question 21

Other than RWA scales, what else can measure political orientation?

Answer 21

Single question -

Single-item measure where participants self-report their political orientation as
‘Very Liberal’ (1),
‘Liberal’ (2),
‘Middle of the road’ (3),
‘Conservative (4), or
‘Very Conservative’ (5)

Question 22

Jost et al. (2003) conducted a meta-analysis of psychological variables that predict political conservatism - what were significant positive correlations?

Answer 22

Political conservatism is positively correlated with:

Dogmatism and Intolerance of ambiguity
e.g. If doing a task with a familiar strategy conservatives are more likely to stick with it than use a new one

Need for order and Need for cognitive closure

Question 23

Jost et al. (2003) conducted a meta-analysis of psychological variables that predict political conservatism - what task were conservatives worse at?

Answer 23

Conservatives worse at integrative complexity - complex tasks that require the integration of information

Question 24

Jost et al. (2003) conducted a meta-analysis of psychological variables that predict political conservatism - what were significant negative correlations?

Answer 24

General sensation seeking
Valuing imaginativeness
Openness to experience

Also negatively correlated with self-esteem but with a much smaller effect

Question 25

Were right or left wingers more aroused by appetitive or aversive images? (Dodd et al., 2012)

Answer 25

Right wingers more aroused by aversive images Left wingers more aroused by appetitive images Measured by skin conductance change Aversive = something that evokes disgust Appetitive = food or sex

Question 26

Oxley et al (2008) measured people's political orientation with qs from the Wilson-Patterson format Level of Support for Protective Policies. He then tested responses to threatening stimuli. What were results from skin conductance reactivity to visual threat and blink amplitude in response to startling stimuli?

Answer 26

Low support = liberal (against protective policies like military spending, death penalty etc) High support = conservative (against immigration, gun control etc) Low = no difference in skin conductance reactivity to threatening and non-threatening visual stimuli High = much bigger reaction to visually threatening stimuli Low = lower mean blink amplitude to startling sounds High = higher blink amplitude to startling sounds

Question 27

In Inbar, Pizarro and Bloom (2008) - what did disgust predict?

Answer 27

Being against gay marriage, abortion and tax cuts

Question 28

Smith et al. (2011) measured physiological responses to disgusting images. What were characteristics of people who had a strong physiological response to disgusting images?

Answer 28

more likely to rate themselves as politically conservative more likely to be against gay marriage

Question 29

What does body odour disgust predict and what is this mediated by? (Liuzza et al., 2018)

Answer 29

Predicts authoritarian attitudes (attitudes towards Trump), mediated by RWA

Question 30

What could fMRI based multi-regional response to images of animal carcasses predict? (Ahn et al., 2014)

Answer 30

Political views Different patterns of activation across the whole brain

Question 31

What different cognitive styles are shown by liberals and conservatives?

Answer 31

C = more structured and persistent cognitive styles L = more responsive to informational complexity, ambiguity and novelty

Question 32

Amodio et al focused on ‘conflict monitoring’ - what is this?

Answer 32

A general mechanism for detecting when one’s Habitual response tendency is mismatched with responses required by the current situation” E.g. you need to override a pre-existing or otherwise powerful response ‘response override’

Question 33

Amodio et al looked at EEG responses in a Go/Nogo task (not political at all) - what did the task involve?

Answer 33

Participants should quickly respond to frequently-presented Go stimulus e.g. press button when you hear a high tone This response (through repetition) becomes ‘habitual’, ‘prepotent’ However, on a few trials the Nogo stimulus (e.g. low tone) is presented. The participant should withhold this habitual response: ‘response override’ The participant should not press the button

Question 34

Amodio et al looked at EEG responses in a Go/Nogo task (not political at all) - what did the EEG show?

Answer 34

Studied two ERPs a) Error-related negativity - very clear negative activity peak after the wrong response to Nogo trials (failed inhibition) (timelocked to response) Peaks ~50ms after an incorrect response b) Nogo N2 (timelocked to stimulus) Peaks ~200ms after Nogo stimulus

Question 35

Amodio et al looked at EEG responses in a Go/Nogo task (not political at all) - what did error-related negativity (ERN) show about political orientation?

Answer 35

The larger your ERN, the more liberal you are and the greater your accuracy on Nogo trials The Anterior Cingulate is the source of the ERN The larger your Nogo N2, the more liberal you are Realise error has been made and update the strategy - more in liberals Liberals show stronger brain reactivity to cues signalling a need to change a prepotent response pattern. This brain reactivity was centred on the Anterior Cingulate. This presumably explains liberals’ better performance on the task, though brain activity predicts political preference better than task response accuracy.

Question 36

Kanai et al. (2011) (incl. Colin Firth) conducted a study into political orientations and brain structure. What did they find about the anterior cingulate cortex and right amygdala?

Answer 36

The larger your anterior cingulate, the more liberal you are The larger you right amygdala, the more conservative you are Also - a positive correlation between conservatism and insula volume (insula involved in taste and disgust) Using a learning (‘leave one out’) algorithm trained on this sample, you can infer the poles (extreme ends, 1 vs 4) quite well. Algorithm can deduce if someone from this sample is ‘Very liberal’ (1) or ‘Conservative’ (4) with 71.6% accuracy.